[Xerte] Xerte for primary school audience

[Alistair McNaught]

Hi all
I've had so many good ideas from people and useful advice that I thought I'd let people see where I've got to so far so I can get comments on how to improve it. Also copied to technical list in case they have any ideas on improvements (preferably not too technical!).

Please note that I've just worked on the basic Xerte skeleton at the moment. I intend to use Xerte to link to jigsaw type activities (and other web based tools) as well as Interactive PowerPoints and interactive Word documents. http://itq.jisctechdis.ac.uk/xerte/play_66 is the resource so far.

All of the templates I've used are bog standard Xerte templates but in places I've used a tiny bit of html code <img src="url goes here"> in the standard dialogue boxes to add some extra images. I uploaded the extra images using the Properties panel and then the Media and quota tab which allows you both to upload resources directly (like extra images or PPTs) as well as get a url for any resource you uploaded.

I used the New Page Navigator template to link an interactive PowerPoint into the mix and I'll use this later for links to jigsaws and interactive Word docs as well.

I found PPT absolutely brilliant as a really quick tool for editing images - for example in Slide 13 on the guitar section I needed arrows to point to different things that were being spoken about. I put the image I needed into PPT, duplicated it as many times as I needed then added the arrow, moving and resizing as required (see image below). You can then either group the arrow and image together and right click to "Save as image" or you can do what I did which was to use FS Capture - a free and portable screen snipping tool) to  capture just the bits of each image that I needed. It's really quick once you have a logical workflow.

Things I'm struggling with? At the moment the first three images on slide 13 don't show, even though they are definitely loaded and I can reference them in a test page on slide 14. I'm looking into that. I'm a little unsure if language levels etc are right. Content wise it's a bit of a mix but that's because we are using it as a test to sell an idea about how we could create development focused resources across different parts of the curriculum.

I'm giving this a public outing on Thursday to see if it is worth developing for a schools consortium context in Hampshire so any improvements you can suggest in the short term will be welcome and after Thursday there may be opportunity for me to extend this work much further. I'll keep people updated because live projects are always fun, especially getting input and ideas from people.


[cid:image001.png at 01CC9D30.F5DA57A0]

PowerPoint being used as a Xerte Image editor.

Alistair


Alistair McNaught
Senior Advisor
JISC TechDis
C/O The Higher Education Academy Building
Innovation Way
York Science Park
YORK
YO10 5BR

07870567659
Skype: alistair_techdis
http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk<http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/?utm_source=emailsig&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sitelaunchmail>

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